The North Carolina amendment alters the constitution to say that “marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized” in the state.
—CNN
I don’t often take a preachy tone, and this story has little to do with how the law and technology intersect, which is my usual topic on this website. However, I think people should be treated the same, and when they’re not, I get angry. When masses of people vote for something so clearly despicable that it can accurately be called evil, I have to get my thoughts about it out of my system.
And my thoughts about North Carolina’s ban on same-sex marriage are the following:
One day, the descendants of the 61% of North Carolinians who voted discrimination into their constitution today will look back on what their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents did on Tuesday, May 8, 2012 with disgust, much the same way we do when we read the state’s nonchalant 1875 ban on interracial marriage.
To the 39% of folks in North Carolina who voted with morals, ethics, and plain old common sense:
I implore you, for the sake of your children, to leave your state. Seek refuge from those among your neighbors who would so blight the wonder of democracy.
You are the 39%, who refused to institutionalize hate, to legalize discrimination, to dress up ignorance in the guise of religion, or to use family as a pretext for subjugating a minority. Be proud.
I wrote the article below for Temple Law's student newspaper, Prima Facie. While my views on the topic of copyright liability in the modern Internet's "sharing economy" continue to evolve, I haven't made any edits to the version that ran in Prima's April issue. This is a long post, but I would welcome any feedback, including criticism as long as it's constructive. I also include a postscript at the bottom mentioning a recent development the relevant legal landscape.
Our source noted that Hulu has no interest in being a first mover here and that a requirement for authentication is likely still a few years out. Hulu, however, does want to be a good partner and may have to give in to its partners’ pressure soon or later.
This is a damn shame. It'll be a blow to the common-sense evolution of television as a business model, and a boon to piracy.
Google storage plans have changed, but you can stay on your current plan as long as you:
- Keep your account active
- Keep payment information in Google Wallet accurate and up-to-date
- Don’t cancel or upgrade your current plan
This is good news. I can keep paying $5 per year for 20 GB instead of the $2.50 per month ($30 per year) for 25 GB that new Google Drive users will pay.
Twitter’s “Innovator’s Patent Agreement” – Marco.org »
I recently wrote about Twitter's promise to use patents only for defensive purposes--the "Innovator's Patent Agreement" ("IPA," not to be confused with this). The link above leads to a post by Marco Arment, warning us to read the agreement carefully and maintain a healthy skepticism about the potential loopholes in Twitter's recent patent move. It's a fair warning, and a good point.
Nilay Patel made brief mention over at The Verge of the "fair amount of flexibility" the agreement leaves for Twitter. But Arment really lays out the manner in which Twitter could, if necessary for business reasons, make an end-run around the whole thing.
I don't think they would do that. If they wanted the option to sneak through loopholes, they wouldn't have been so attention-seeking with the IPA announcement in the first place.
“Tim Berners-Lee: demand your data from Google and Facebook” by Ian Katz at guardian.co.uk
Whatever social site, wherever you put your data, you should make sure that you can get it back and get it back in a standard form. And in fact if I were you I would do that regularly, just like you back up your computer … maybe our grandchildren depending on which website we use may or may not be able to see our photos. — Tim Berners-Lee
This is exactly what has me seriously considering something even more “liberated” than Wordpress.org for my post-Posterous blog. Right now, I’m looking at Scriptogr.am, and it’s very promising. Write posts in Markdown, save to Dropbox, and Scriptogr.am turns them into HTML. Scriptogr.am even has a bookmarklet, just like Posterous, Wordpress and the rest.
It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended.
— “Introducing the Innovator’s Patent Agreement” by Adam Messinger, Twitter’s VP of Engineering
This is very good news. Twitter has been known in the past for defending the right of its users against dubious subpoenas. Now, it looks like they’re taking the moral high ground on the patent wars.
This is interesting. With all the attention read-shifting has been getting, it's no surprise that the folks at Read It Later are itching to stay relevant. I use them daily on my Android devices. And it looks like the Android app got some update love, too.
Services like Instapaper and Readability have had a lot of attention lately and it looks like Pocket plans to stay relevant. Read the official blog post from Pocket here. I'll post a review of the rebranded service and updated Android app sometime this week.
This is a decent article by Tina Barseghian of KQED's Mindshift blog, but unfortunately it isn't cynical enough for me. It talks about school policies banning the sharing or selling of class notes. It sets up the dichotomy of a professor's right to be free from unvetted transcriptions of their lecture and a student's copyright in the original bits of their notes, touching on free speech implications along the way.
Some school policies (and the criticisms attacking them) may confuse these issues. Most, however, appear to ban sharing or selling any part of your notes, whether you transcribed the lecture or only wrote down your own thoughts on the material.
My problem with the article itself is Barseghian doesn't mention one of the most important caveats to the professors' reputations/students' copyrights/students' free speech conundrum: that not all students sharing and selling notes are innocently "sharing knowledge" or innocently trying to get their First Amendment on.
Some students "borrow" or buy notes because they are lazy or cheating, or both. Sure, somewhere in the middle there are students who do their own work and choose to supplement it with third-party notes. But I'm too cynical to believe the lazy cheaters aren't in the majority.
As of Monday, April 9 the shareholders of PandoMedia voted to remove Michael Arrington as a director. Given the change in relationship we feel it’s inappropriate for CrunchFund’s partners Michael Arrington and MG Siegler to continue contributing to PandoDaily.
Actually, I think the username "lameusername" is pretty good. The playlist is really good, especially as exams approach. It has some covers of popular songs, which I sometimes find distracting, but these are so well done that they compliment the ambient flow. This might push Daft Punk's original soundtrack for Tron: Legacy out of my top spot for working-hard-on-school-stuff music.
on March 16, 2012 (Samsung Galaxy Nexus with version 0.8.3)
Great functionality
via play.google.com
I wonder if anyone else feels this way. I sure don't: Leo has genuine insight and awkward charm, two things to which I will always aspire. Yes, sometimes his faux misogynist/racist/homophobic comments go a little too far, but he's self-aware and is always quick with an apology.
My fiancee Megan found this and I just had to post about it. This thing is amazing. It offers a wide range of agility and mobility to paraplegics . Frankly, the guy in this video is probably more active than I am. It's an encouraging example of how tech can improve lives, but it's also a reminder that advancements like this are probably out of financial reach for most people.
I couldn't find any pricing information on their website. But it's pretty clear from seeing the tech involved that it probably an expensive piece of equipment. Hopefully, some day, stuff like this will be within reach for many of the people whose lives it could change.
The site says it will be released for Mac OS X this summer. That means I'll be spending time on the fiancee's iMac, much to her annoyance. But it's great news: this is one of those games that I played with friends and really defined an important gaming era in my life. I'm definitely looking forward to Enhanced Edition.
Today, Google unveiled the 8-bit-ification of Maps. The map below is an interactive version of the image at the top of this post. I've also embedded Google's video introducing the game-changing new product. It really makes me want to game all day instead of doing homework. I won't do that, but boy, do I want to. It's killing me.
Source: Google Lat Long Blog; Hat-tip to Adi Robertson at The Verge, where I first found this story; Image definitely copyrighted by Google and modified by me without permission, using Skitch, with confidence that they won't mind
HBO, still married to the cable industry, requires you to sign in/”authenticate” through your cable/satellite/telco TV provider, which verifies that you’re an HBO subscriber, before streaming any videos. But Comcast and Time Warner Cable are not on Microsoft’s list that will support HBO Go for Xbox.
Well, isn't this just stupid! As Dan Frommer writes at his blog SplatF, HBO recently put out an app that everyone seems to love (HBO Go), for a service everyone seems to love (same name as the first), on a platform that everyone seems to love (Xbox Live).
The only problem is that subcribers to Comcast or Time Warner Cable can't use the new HBO Go app to access HBO's content on the Xbox. They can use the Xfinity app Comast recently released, but not the HBO Go app.
You know, the one right next to the Xfinity app in the Xbox Dashboard.
This is confusing to consumers and a telling sign that these companies, including Microsoft, were not yet ready to launch these products on Xbox Live. Perhaps they rushed it out in the wake of reality checks like MG Siegler's "Help! I’m Being Forced To Pirate Game Of Thrones Against My Will!" over at PandoDaily. But this kind of response is definitely too little.
Whether or not it's too late, we'll just have to wait and see.
Image via Washington & Jefferson College
 |
| Photo by Longzero; Found at Fotopedia |
Today PandoDaily ran a guest post by Hamish McKenzie about how magazines should look at how to transition from glorified RSS readers like proprietary apps and Pulse, Feedly, and Flud. McKenzie's post, titled "The Future of Magazines Should Look a Lot Like Spotify," made a compelling case that publishers would do well to partner on something like an interactive version of Instapaper or Read It Later with aggregation. McKenzie's thesis essentially argues for à la carte article availability. Spotify comes into the picture because an all-you-can-read subscription model, so says McKenzie, would be very, very popular.
So say we all.I think McKenzie is absolutely onto something here. He explains the fragmented experience that results from having an app for every magazine or newspaper, as well as RSS apps, as well as what I call "read-shifting" apps like Instapaper. Some are available on one or two platforms, few are available on all, and when they are, the experience varies wildly.
McKenzie's idea is brilliant, and I share his dream. He mentions Flud, the latest entrant into the aforementioned crowded news reader app war. I have been trying out their Android app for a week or so and it's very compelling. You can follow and be followed from within the app, like Spotify, and you can share—or "flud"—something especially wonderful that you read to other Flud users.That functionality is a step in the right direction if you agree that "one subscription to rule them all" is a better future for reading high-quality reporting and editorial content from the web. There are some problems, though. Despite being a fan of the idea, I see DRM for interactive, primarily text-based content as more problematic than for music.Spotify can be "ripped" by people with enough knowledge and time (and few enough scruples), allowing one to save the stream and even split it automatically into individual songs, complete with metadata. But it's hard. The service is wonderful, and unless you have an old-school urge to own your tunes, you'll probably find yourself amenable to paying them.I suspect that McKenzie's imaginary "Mag Reader" service would be easier to rip content from, and therefore even more difficult to get off the ground than subscription music services. Publishers are scared, and they should be: their business model is on its way out. But the distribution control problem has to be solved before they'll risk involvement in the new media economy.That problem shouldn't stop someone ingenious from building something awesome on top of McKenzie's idea. Flud is close, so is Instapaper, especially with features like, well, "The Feature." These are bold new ways of doing something where the tired old ways are no longer sufficient, from an economic or user-experience perspective. A great idea like "Mag Reader" couple with great development and even better execution could truly change how publishers and consumers alike approach the distribution and consumption of journalism (and who knows, why not fiction?) in the 21st century.We can all agree that that's something worth doing.
Taken with my Galaxy Nexus
One series of tests using empty houses at Vandenberg Air Force Base compared [this new] system with a 20-gallon-per-minute, 1,400 pound-per-square-inch (psi) discharge capability (at the pump) versus a standard 100-gallon-per-minute, 125 psi standard hand line—the kind that typically takes a few firemen to control. The standard line extinguished a set fire in a living room in 1 minute and 45 seconds using 220 gallons of water. The [new] system extinguished an identical fire in 17.3 seconds using 13.6 gallons—with a hose requiring only one person to manage.
This is a great post about the importance of giving NASA and its contractors the funding needed to truly innovate. At the end of the day, the stuff that advances space tech very often advances Earth tch, as well.
Image via NASA
In the proceeding, the content owner is presumed to have both identified the copyrighted work correctly and correctly identified the alleged infringer. The burden of proof is on the consumer to prove them wrong.
I found this at the corner of 24th and Sansom streets in Philly. I have no idea what it is, but it's really well-done and looks almost professionally bolted to the signpost.
Koenig's steam-powered printing press, 1814, from Wikipedia
“The Tragedy of Anonymous Comment Threads” by David Hoffman at Concurring Opinions”
This is a great post about the pitfalls of living in fear of rejection. While Professor Hoffman, whose Corporations class I took, focuses on the academic culture of rejection-fear he sees reflected in blog comments, his insight applies just as well to fiction.
Posterous is Joining the Flock at Twitter
Read the source link for all the details from the Official Posterous Space. I've been a Posterous user for a long time, and I'll be very angry if they do to Posterous what they did to TweetDeck and some of their other acquire-and-kill purchases.
Dan Rowinski has a story on ReadWriteWeb today about Mozilla's plan to put its Boot 2 Gecko platform on smartphones. Mozilla, the nonprofit best known for leading developing of the Firefox browser, will use HTML5 and Javascript as the basis for all applications. This is similar to what Palm attempted with webOS, but booting directly into what is essentially a browser environment will make Mozilla's implementation even easier for most developers.
I'm excited to see that the dominance of Apple in mindshare and usability, and of Google-led Android in sheer numbers of handsets sold, hasn't discouraged a new innovator like Mozilla from entering the fray. Palm's eventual failure and disappearance into the HP fold should serve as a stark warning, though: Mozilla needs to build and maintain a vision, and while they don't want any partnerships watering down the open source moniker (as some say Google has done with Android), they'll need buy-in from quality hardware designers at all consumer price levels to enter the market with a fighting chance.
So Dropbox auto-syncs your files & uploads pics from Android but is limited to 5 GB for free. Box is giving anyone who installs their Android app 50 GB (their blog says the offer is good for the next four weeks) free but doesn't sync? That's a shame.
No matter, though. It would appear that Google is poised to disrupt the hell out of this space (isn't that the lingo?) very soon.
Image by author, using images that are all copyrighted by someone else. I'll take it down if told to, but I couldn't resist the imagery.
Consider the daily cute quota filled.
A Google spokesman declined to comment.
Read the title of the link, and then read the blockquoted bit above this sentence. We know Google is probably doing this thanks to Amir Efrati and Ethan Smith at the Wall Street Journal. And the story I link to at the top of this post is an excerpt from Efrati's and Smith's report in the WSJ.
What's the problem? FOX News is the problem. Efrati and Smith used the headline "Apple vs. Google: The Stakes Are Rising." That is a great headline (more drama than information, but true-to-life drama). Their story appeared on Techmeme entitled "Google Developing Home Entertainment System." That's even better.
FOX News didn't like either of those, though. Instead, they added a heaping helping of linkbait, probably hoping non-techies would be more interested if something was already being unveiled: "Google unveils plans to develop home entertainment system."
But "unveils" is usually, at least in the tech industry, a synonym for "announces" or "releases." And even if they were unveiling, announcing, or releasing plans to develop a home entertainment system, they would still be just that: plans. The headline would still be misleading at best.
We have rumors, quotes from anonymous sources trusted by reporters at WSJ that we (or at least I) trust. But, at the risk of being repetitive, let me finish with the most certain thing we know about this Google entertainment system story:
A Google spokesman declined to comment.
Image via Gianpaolo Bottin
I love Seesmic. I use their web interface every day. Their Android app is still wonderful, despite being wholly ignored by the company since Summer 2011. Seesmic Ping is an app for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone that lets you schedule updates to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, including attachments.
It sounded intriguing at first. After all, the Seesmic team has done some amazing work. But the truth is: Ping is basically an entire app that consists of a single feature from a solution--Seesmic for Android, iPhone and Windows Phone--that already does what Ping does.
Okay, so Seesmic never scheduled from mobile before, so I guess that's an improvement. I schedule a lot of tweets, but I'm always at my computer, on Seesmic Web or Tweetdeck for Chrome. I suppose there's a market out there for folks who often need to schedule from the road (is there?), I'm just not one of them.
The downside is that this will eventually become a paid service, according to the company's blog post about it. They promise more services, posting by email, and some other features once the product is out of beta. But would you pay for something that update social networks if it can't read them as well?
Update: Seesmic for Android just got an update this morning. Nothing earth-shattering, but Trending Topics is fixed, it now supports t.co links, and they have removed Google Buzz support. There are also apparently lots of bugfixes. I'm installing the update now.
My Motorola Triumph is bad on battery, partially due to the time it spends in "Cell Standby" trying to find a signal from Virgin Mobile indoors. Auto Airplane Mode keeps the radios off when the screen is off. It isn't always ideal, but it's easy to turn off and really helps battery life. I can keep an eye on incoming SMS and missed calls via the Google Voice extension in Chrome. Everyone wins.
This isn't an article, but a presentation put together by venture capitalist Ryan Spoon and some colleagues (although Spoon guest-posted it at TechCrunch). It's great for developers and entrepreneurs, but I think it's just as good for app users and people who think and write about this stuff a lot.
We all have complaints about even our favorite apps, and this presentation is a great starting point for thinking about how better to express ourselves in the feedback we give devs.
The photo really says all there is to say about this situation.
Update: Ugh, for the second time today numbers have fucked me. The damn dog is 95lb, not 180lb. Gah!
As I'm sure you know by now, Facebook filed an S-1 with the SEC in anticipation of an initial public offering (see Josh Constine's write-up at TechCrunch).
They included the above image in their SEC filing, but left out what I think is the craziest piece of data:
December 2010 = 327 million daily active users
December 2011 = 483 million (!!!) daily active users
That's a 48% increase in one year.
That's crazy.
Update: @aworldgoesnova pointed out that it's only a 30% increase, and Facebook's S-1 is, well, wrong when it calls it a 48% increase.
Update the second: @aworldgoesnova pointed out that I misquoted the December 2011 number as 425M. I've fixed that, too. So, the original percentage was right, and I've changed it back. Boo to me, but thanks to her! Oh, and numbers and I remain in a lifelong feud.
I can't wait to test drive this, especially because I recently tried using the original Seesmic for Android again. I'll post a proper review sometime next week, but the ability to schedule updates to Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn from within the new app is a welcome feature. In fact, any word from Seesmic on the social networking from is welcome, considering they haven't updated their original app since June 2011, focusing instead on their Salesforce CRM partnership.
Update: The new app is available on iOS, as well.
This is a great post about Googler Matias Duarte's approach to redesigning Android with Ice Cream Sandwich. Fast Company's E.B. Boyd did the piece, and it's a great window into how Duarte really reinvented how users interact with Android on a fundamental level.
"5 Ways That Android Is Trying To Break The Mobile UI Paradigm" by E.B. Boyd at Fast Company
Image via Android.com
Update: I called the upcoming service an ISP, but it's really going to be a hosting provider. Think Hover.com rather than Comcast. I was wrong but now it's fixed.
Rob Beschizza at Boing Boing reports that Zurich-based ISP Ort Cloud bought the domain Righthaven.com at auction after Righthaven was shut down in the face of huge debts and a lack of standing in all its pending cases.
The copyright troll Righthaven made a business out of licensing the right to sue infringers of newspaper copyrights, until they were told that the right to sue, although technically valid, does not constitute standing to sue without a license for one of the exclusive rights the Copyright Act gives to copyright holders, as well.
The company sank into debt and was dismantled and sold off in bits and pieces to appease creditors. Ort Cloud plans to build a hosting service at the domain that is more deferential to the rights of its customers than many others. They were explicit, however, that piracy and torrents wil be banned.
This is beautiful. I'm not sure how much value it adds over a standard inspector view, but I love it anyway. Here's more about it at Hack.Mozilla.Org.
A cell site in Wyoming
Chris Ziegler is one of the top minds in mobile tech and policy, and this January 20, 2012 editorial about the death of unlimited data plans, and what comes next, is well worth your time.
"Unlimited data is dead, so let's fight a smarter fight" by Chris Ziegler at The Verge
Image via Wikipedia user Milonica
Long-term there’s no future in printed books. They’ll be like vinyl: pricey and for collectors only. 95% of people will read digitally. Everybody in publishing knows this but most are in denial about it because moving to becoming a digital company means laying off like 40% of our staffs. And the barriers to entry fall, too. We simply don’t want to think about it.
Image via Amit Gupta's Tumblr
It would appear that this dusting is fixing to stick.
Even if we don’t watch their movies in a theater or buy their plastic discs of hostility, we’re still supporting them. If we watch their movies on Netflix or other flat-rate streaming or rental services, the service effectively pays them on our behalf next time they negotiate the rights or buy another disc. And if we pirate their movies, we’re contributing to the statistics that help them convince Congress that these destructive laws are necessary.
Marco Arment makes some great points, and he is probably right that a boycott of the intellectual property produced by MPAA members, coupled with support of campaign finance reform, would reduce the ease with which the Association purchases pro-industry, anti-consumer legislation.
The depressing thing, though, is that it's just not a realistic suggestion. Netflix is one of, if not the, most bandwidth-intensive services in the world (see Todd Wasserman's write-up at Mashable). People won't stop going to theaters, or purchasing films online or in stores, or simply pirating them.
The problem is one of delayed consequences. Smokers continue to smoke, despite widespread knowledge about the undisputed health dangers, because the consequences are so delayed (cigarette now, cancer in ten years). The same principle applies to the fact that consumers won't stop buying films now to prevent consumer-hostile legislation in five or ten years.
Image via Briar Press
Nancy Messieh of The Next Web posted yesterday that "Iranian web programmer" Saeed Malekpour, a Canadian resident, faces the death penalty in Iran. His previous sentence for "insulting the sanctity of Islam" was upheld by Iran's highest court. Malekpour wrote in a March 2010 letter posted by Persian2English that:
A large portion of my confession was extracted under pressure, physical and psychological torture, threats to myself and my family, and false promises of immediate release upon giving a false confession to whatever the interrogators dictated.
This is not justice, it's state-sanctioned murder. I don't know much about international law, but it's difficult to read about stuff like this and know that there is little, if anything, that can be done to assist people like Mr. Malekpour.
Iran's actions here and in similar cases are the true insult to Islam.
Image via Wikipedia
Athima Chansanchai of MSNBC wrote about a recently-released Nielsen study showing an absolute explosion of iPhone growth in the past three months. Here's the face-melting part:
Can anyone cite a precedent where Google used the front page for such an unquestionably political stance?
The most dangerous thing about our dislike of schleps is that much of it is unconscious. Your unconscious won't even let you see ideas that involve painful schleps. That's schlep blindness.
—Paul Graham, Y Combinator | http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html
Image by Sarah Harlin, via Wikipedia
Regarding Julian Sanchez, the former Ars editor who is the main subject of the MPAA blog post, he committed a serious act of journalism for us back in 2008 when he showed conclusively just how bogus some of the central antipiracy figures were. His new post on the subject for Cato is also well worth a read.
I read and write a lot about copyright. Hopefully, as my time in law school has elapsed, my views have become more nuanced. I'm not a copyright maximalist, though, like many of the big digital media companies. I understand that piracy is bad and rampant and needs to be addressed. But I, like the folks at Ars Technica, don't think that playing around with how the internet fundamentally works (like SOPA would apparently do) or increasing penalties for infringement are good options.
EMI is feeling very litigous these days. Now, it seems they're suing Ireland. Like, the nation. Well, the nation's government, really. The legislature is apparently working on legislation that would allow rights holders to seek an injunction requiring ISPs to block access to sites accused of piracy.
The legislation, which facially seems to provide exactly the kind of relief EMI was seeking, is moving slowly. In fact, it's moving so slowly that EMI would rather sue than wait any longer.
In its 18-page complaint, filed in a New York federal court, EMI alleged that to operate its business, ReDigi must make numerous unauthorized copies of songs and that that violates copyright law.
ReDigi, whom I've written about before, here and here, are the target of a new lawsuit from music label EMI.
"Post-Artifact Books and Publishing" by Craig Mod is a fascinating analysis of the publishing upheaval taking place these days.
http://craigmod.com/journal/post_artifact/
Image via freefoto.com.
The harm done to legitimate businesses by totally bogus copyright claims seems like it should be a big deal. If the government is really concerned about jobs, rather than passing something like SOPA, shouldn't it be ramping up the punishment for bogus copyright claims that cause so much real harm to businesses?
Mike Masnick of Techdirt is prone to hyperbole and one-sided discussions, but I like his stuff because I usually agree with him. This quote is no exception. I wrote about my thoughts on the Veoh case at KeyPulp, so I won't rehash them here.
But I think there's a real threat that large rights holders will see litigation as a good primary strategy for squashing innovators who are otherwise protected by the law. It's alarming and counterproductive. Deterrents against this kind of behavior can't save SOPA, but they should be included in any legislation that purports to offer a more universally-palatable alternative.
Christmas serves as a remind to me that we all need to try a little harder throughout the year, recognize that the awful people are missing out on a better perspective, that some of them may be open to the influence of a good person, and that if we're paying attention, we could be that person for them.
Corny? Yes. Sincere? Yup.This is something I wrote at a Google+ discussion thread about a Slate story on one person's non-religious celebration of Christmas.
Schemer is a social network for to-dos, built by "a scrappy team of Google engineers who wanted to help people do fun stuff in the real world." It's cute and decidedly un-Googley from a design perspective, but after adding some "schemes" to my profile, I don't know what it is supposed to *do* or *solve*. Now you know some of the things I want to do. So what?
I'm all done for the semester, but this case is such a classic I just had to post about it. Consider it a send-off for the semester, a goodbye and an I-won't-miss-you. Seiler v Lucasfilm involved a man claiming he designed the walkers from Star Wars and George Lucas infringed his copyright in using the design in the films.
The catch? Seiler had "lost" the original sketches (allegedly penned prior to Lucas' independent designs) on which his claim was based, and instead offered "reconstructions" of the original sketches. Seiler lost at summary judgement based on Federal Rule of Evidence 1002, requiring the original of writings, recordings or photographs.
This was a classic, if not wholly inept, shakedown attempt. Read more at Google Scholar.
The amazing Megan got me Skyrim as an early Christmas present!
Jessica Stillman wrote a great post today at GigaOM about this report by The Institute For the Future. The report is embedded below, but Stillman's post is worth a read too because she does a great job of parsing the vital bits of the report.
The House Judiciary Committee is debating mark-up on the Stop Online Piracy Act right now. There's a lot of writing about the Act, its sister act (classic movie...) in the Senate, PROTECT-IP, and a newly-circulated draft alternative called OPEN. The latter is co-sponsored by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), and even has a fancy website.
I'm not going to re-hash all the arguments here. Nate Anderson at Ars Technica's Law & Disorder blog is decidedly anti-SOPA and PROTECT-IP (as am I, admittedly), but he did a good summary of all the positions. Below, I've embedded recent versions of SOPA, PROTECT-IP, OPEN, a letter written by three law professors (including Professor David Post of Temple Law, whose copyright class I took this semester) and signed by 110 of their colleagues, and a blockquote of the open letter companies like Facebook and Google have signed, warning people about the problems with SOPA.
I like primary sources, and since I haven't had time to read these proposals myself, I wanted to present them all in one place instead of adding to the wrong side of this debate's signal-versus-noise ratio. So, without further ado:
John Paczkowski of All Things Digital has a good interview with two executives from Carrier IQ, the mobile diagnostics company under fire since the release of a video by Android developer Trevor Eckhart showing how much information their embedded software collects about mobile phones. The report, containing much of what the company will use to answer questions from Congress, is embedded below.
This is a new post I'm going to do every Sunday, recapping what I thought were the week's best reads. I compulsively scan a huge amount of incoming blog posts and news stories, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. You'll find a lot more of what I recently considered worthy reading in my plus-one stream at Google+.
And now for the list:
This image from Digital Music News was published by Paul Resnikoff back in August 2011. Tthat post included a GIF of the pie chart values from 1981 to 2010 that is even more illustrative of the CD's downfall.
In March, Time's Michelle Castillo ran a story about how there's one more year left before digital music sales outpace CD sales.
Today, Laura Locke over at Technologizer ran an interview she did with Steve Jobs the day he announced the iTunes music store. Here's a particularly prescient exchange from that conversation:
Technologizer: With iTunes Music Store, the artists win, music labels win, but what about traditional retailers?
Jobs: You should go ask them. The Internet was made to deliver music.
I can't even remember the last time I bought a CD. I snicker to myself whenever a PR person offers to send me music via CD for a review on KeyPulp. It seems so outdated, so laggy. It looks like Steve was right to doubt the prospects of analog music sales in a digital world.
What if a little site you love doesn't have a business model? Yell at the developers! Explain that you are tired of good projects folding and are willing to pay cash American dollar to prevent that from happening. It doesn't take prohibitive per-user revenue to put a project in the black. It just requires a number greater than zero.
I came across this post by Pinboard guy Maciej Ceglowski via Marco Arment's blog. It's a great post, because it's 100% true, at least for me. Let me explain.
I love this. I've seen some of it on campus, but my law school friends are AWESOME and mostly lawnerds, so there's still plenty of outlining among 3L evening folks at Temple.
Updated December 9, 2011: Hey, the new Posterous bar is officially live, albeit with a slightly different look than the test version I found. If you have a customized theme, replace {block:PosterousBar} with {block:PosterousHeader /} immediately after <body>. If your customized theme has neither, be sure to add {block:PosterousHeader /}. Check out the official Posterous Help page for adding the new box to custom themes here.Thanks to Posterous user RachelShelleyRX for pointing this out!
Last night I noticed a new, more compact and elegant version of the "Posterous bar" that sits atop all of the platform's user blogs. I first saw it on one of Garry Tan's Posterous sites. Tan is a co-founder of the blogging platform who later left to join start-up incubator (and Posterous investors) Y Combinator. His Posterous now sports the classy new Posterous bar/box, pictured below.
I'm super-excited about the news that Microsoft's massive style and content update to Xbox 360 will include YouTube. It will make our next marathon session of watching cute animals, fail videos, and angry gamer clips (not to mention TWiT.tv) so much more enjoyable. Ross Miller has the whole story at The Verge.
I haven't seen this before and I suspect it was put up recently by an Occupier. Police have maintained an increased presence at Rittenhouse Square in response to nightly marches to the area by Occupy Philly participants.
In fact, there was an empty police cruiser parked on the sidewalk behind the spot where I stood to take this photo. There was a car at every entrance to the park, even in early afternoon with no protesters in sight.
I snapped this in the middle of Season 7 Episode 19, "Genesis." The crew, including their pets, were genetically de-evolving. Data's cat Spot birthed these kittens shortly before turning into a lizard.
TNG 4 EVA
The new YouTube design should be live for all users by now soon. TechCrunch did a great post about it, but I have a complaint.
Around 12:30 a.m., it looked as though police had circled the entirety of City Hall. But Occupiers were showing up, too. And there finally seemed to be more protesters than press on hand. Captain Fisher of the Philadelphia Police gave the protesters their first warning. If they stayed, they’d be arrested.
I make no representations as to the quality of these photographs. We were in the city to see some family for the holiday, so I put my Motorola Triumph to the test.
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I hope this does push some of the small registries in India to the forefront so they can experience the kind of growth that will save lives.
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Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim comes out tomorrow, and the embargo on reviews ran out late last night, so there is plenty of digital ink being spilt about the game. I have been looking for every review I can find, and I thought I should share that effort with other geeks.
Update: I decided to include the body of this post from my Tumblr over here at Posterous as well. I thought hard about it, so I want to make it available on both blogs. I'd love to hear your thoughts about how you learn, or teach for that matter, in the comments.
Here's the full transcript of the interview Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Cheryl Sandberg did with Charlie Rose. Here's the Charlie Rose page about Zuckerberg.
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I'm very nervous about this.
 Official Google Blog: Google+ Pages: connect with all the things you care about
Google+ Pages: connect with all the things you care about. 11/07/2011 10:01:00 AM. In life we connect with all kinds of people, places and things. There's friends and family, of course, but there&...
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There are naturally many examples of when tougher laws change behavior, and there are also even examples of when tougher laws have made a substantial contribution in changing social norms. However, there are a few possible drawbacks when law turns repressive.
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Here's a Google+ to Posterous test using autopost. Autumn leaves FTW.
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